Tuesday, 20 October 2015

Main Task: Information on Magazine Publishers

Information of Magazine Publishers

Here, I will choose three magazine publishers to research in order to think about who would publish my own magazine. I will be researching about who owns them, what other magazines they publish along with their music magazines, how many magazines they publish, what percentage of the market they have, their audience and their multi-platform products.

Bauer

Who owns them?

Managed by five generations of the Bauer family, Bauer Media Group originated as a small printing house located in Germany. With the launch of Bella Magazine, Bauer Media Group made its entrance to the UK, the original UK business trades known as H Bauer Publishing (under CEO David Goodchild). Under this name, they became the third largest publisher in Britain. In November 2010, management of Bauer Media Group was assumed by Heinz Henrich’s daughter, Yvonne.

Other magazines they publish

Other magazine published by Bauer include:

· The Debrief – a magazine aimed at women

· Empire - a monthly film magazine

· Closer – a celebrity news and gossip magazine featuring real life stories and television/entertainment

· Grazia – a women’s weekly magazine

· Heat – a British celebrity weekly magazine

· Yours – a fortnightly lifestyle magazine aimed at women over 50

· Motor Cycle News – a motorcycle magazine

· Parker’s Car Guide – a monthly car magazine

· AM (Automotive Management) – a UK automotive magazine

Their music magazines

Music magazines published by Bauer include:

Kerrang!

Kerrang!, the world’s biggest selling weekly music magazine, targeting passionate, dedicated, youth audiences that love music. Kerrang! focuses on mainly the genre of rock, featuring reviews, gig guides, posters, all multi-platform every week.

MOJO

With a predominantly target audience and no one specific focus, MOJO is the UK’s largest qualitative music magazine filled with integrity.

The world’s biggest monthly music magazine, Q has a predominantly male audience with an excellent reputation for quality. Q is full of readers with an undying passion for music, unrivalled in passion.

How many magazines they publish

Bauer publish 107 different brands and more than 570 magazines, over 300 digital products and 50 radio and TV stations. More than 600 titles worldwide reach out to all the key target groups, especially women.

What percentage of the market they have

56% of women read a magazine from Bauer, selling approximately 433 million issues each year, of which 96% are retail sales and subscriptions. 25 of their magazines are among the 100 highest selling in retail sales. They are also market leaders in consumer magazines in weeklies, premiums, youth, people and lifestyle, children, listings guides and more. They also publish the top two selling women’s weekly magazines – Woman’s World and First for Woman. With 42 radio channels they are the second largest private radio provider in the UK with a market share of over 30 percent.

Their audience

Bauer has a predominantly female audience, aimed more so at adults over 25.

Multi-platform products

Alongside magazines, Bauer are also among the market leaders in the ePaper and eMagazine sectors. They are number 1 in the Apple newsstand with more than 130 titles worldwide. Their radio and TV brands have also expanded on the web through apps and social media with over 90 channels.

Future PLC

Who owns them?

Peter Allen and Zillah Byng-Thorne are chairman and CEO of Future PLC respectively. Other members of the team include Manjir Wolstenholm (Senior Independent Non-Executive Director), Hugo Drayton (Independent Non-Executive Director), and Mark Wood (Non-Executive Director) among more in the Executive team.

Other magazines they publish

Other magazines published by Future PLC include:

3D World
Computer Arts
Digital Camera Magazine
Edge
GamesMaster
ImagineFX
iPad User Magazine
Linux Format
MacFormat
Net
N-Photo
PC Format
PC Gamer
PhotoPlus
PlayStation Official Magazine
Practical Photoshop
SFX
T3
Total Film
Windows 7 Help & Advice
Xbox: The Official Magazine

Their music magazines

Music magazines published by Future PLC include:

Computer Music
Future Music
Guitar Techniques
Guitarist
Rhythm
Total Guitar

How many magazines they publish

With a strong multi-platform portfolio across print, tablet, online, video, mobile, apps and events. Future’s movie websites attract over 49 million page views each month, making Future PLC a leading movies publisher. They have one of the most highly respected music portfolios in the world, but their largest sector is in games – their portfolio reaching over 14.6 million every month.

What percentage of the market they have

N/A

Their audience

Future PLC’s audience is mainly people fascinated by media; technology, music and games. As such, they publish very audience-specific magazines as shown above. It was also stated by CEO Zillah Byng-Thorne that “There is a clear indication that Future’s outstanding and engaging content is making us the go-to online destination for men in the UK, we meet their needs and are trusted to provide entertaining insight”. This is solid proof that Future PLC’s target audience is men, aged between 25 and 34, as the online digital business is most likely to be visited by this age group.

Multi-platform products

Future PLC are spread across print, digital, tablet, mobile, video and events, making them very malleable to welcome new audiences.

TimeInc. (Formerly known as IPC Media)

Who owns them?

TimeInc. is owned by Time Warner. In 1990, Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications to form Time Warner.

Other magazines they publish

TimeInc. publish these genres of magazine:

Business & Technology
Health
Entertainment
Fashion & Beauty
Food & Wine
Home & Design
Luxury
News
Sports & Fitness
Travel

Their music magazines

Under the “Entertainment” genre, you can find music magazines that are published by TimeInc. such as NME and Uncut. There are bands featured such as Coldplay, which implies to me that fans of these types of magazines are also fans of the genre of rock.

How many magazines they publish

Shown very helpfully on TimeInc.’s website is a list of featured brands published by them.

What percentage of the market they have

I have researched that over 2.6 million adults in the UK read a magazine published by this organisation.

Their audience

It seems that their main target audience are adults in general. In terms of music magazines, their audience seem to be mainly fans of rock (as they distribute rock based music magazines such as NME) which could appeal to almost any age group.

Multi-platform products

TimeInc. is based on a number of different platforms:

Print
Digital
Video
Social
Mobile
Tablet

Thursday, 15 October 2015

Main Task: Music Magazine Questionnaire

Follow this link to take the questionnaire: Music Magazine Questionnaire

Tuesday, 13 October 2015

Main Task: Overview of the Magazine Industry

Here, I am going to assess the magazine industry as a whole; looking as facts and figures, top selling magazines, top selling music magazines, how much is spent on buying magazines and how much advertisers spend on placing their products in magazines.

Top selling magazines

Shown above is a list of the top 10 magazines in the UK and Ireland by sales according to the latest ABC statistics as of February 2015. If you are trying to market your own magazine, this an excellent resource for quantitative research as you can see what kinds of magazines have made it big and try to find a unique titles that have no already been created, and you can find out what your customers want.

It shows here that ‘TV Choice’ is the absolute top selling magazine in the UK and Ireland. Judging that the second most successful magazine – ‘What’s on TV’ – is also in the TV Listings category, we can assume that this is the most popular category in this area. However, 6/10 categories featured on this list are of the Women’s weeklies category, proving solidly that this is the most popular choice of type of magazine.

Top selling music magazines

1. Q

2. Rolling Stone

3. Entertainment Weekly

4. Billboard

5. Blender

6. Alternative Press

7. Paste

8. Vibe

9. NME

10. Spin

Shown above is a list of the top 10 music magazines (according to this website http://top40.about.com/od/top10lists/tp/musicmagazines.htm ). It seems that these magazines have been around for some time now, and therefore well-known across generations.

How much is spent on magazines?

Shown here is a list of fifteen magazines, showing the circulation figures for each one. Circulation for the first six months of 2014 is followed by the figure same period a year earlier, the percentage change year on year and then the digital edition sales (where applicable).
Magazines aimed at young children (Barbie, Ben 10) seem to do very well generally, most likely because families see these titles advertised on TV, in stores, books etc., and children respond to familiarity very well. It would make sense that many of these magazine are distributed in areas where children will see and want them.
(Fun fact: The most successful magazine to launch is Forever Sports, which debuted with a monthly paid-for circulation of 62,277.)

How much do advertisers spend on placing their products in magazines?

The cost of advertising in a magazine very much depends on the magazine you want you advert to appear in.

Smaller, perhaps local magazines are likely to charge much less than national magazines with millions of readers/subscribers, since a lot more people are going to see your placement there.

Also, the cost of the advert is largely dependent of the size you make it. For example, if your ad is of smaller scale and on a quarter-page, you can imagine it will not cost as much as a full-page advert.

Magazines are also likely to charge less par advert when you run your ad in more than one issue of the magazine. If you run it for six issues at the cost of £1,500 per advert, you would be paying a total of £9,000.

The colour and positioning of the advertisement are also a factor. Ads that are in black and white cost the minimal amount, whereas two or three colour ads cost more than that, and full colour ads will cost more still. On the insides of the front and back cover are spaces specifically for advertisements, and this is where the size makes another big impact. A full page ad on the back of the front cover can cost as much as £142,000 at an estimate!

Monday, 12 October 2015

Main Task: Complete analysis of a music magazine

I have chosen to look into the magazine ‘Kerrang!’ in more detail.

History

Kerrang!, the world’s largest weekly magazine, began publication of 6^th June 1981 as a monthly magazine. As it became more popular, the magazine became a fortnightly, and then a weekly publication starting as of 1987. During the late 1990s, Kerrang! was introduced in Australia and by this point was also published in Spanish and German. Post 2000, as bands such as Slipknot and Limp Bizkit were becoming more popular, the magazine rose further in interest - the history of the magazine ties in heavily to the wide range of music genres it has covered in its lifespan. In 2008, Bauer Media Group became the owner of the magazine.

Genres of music it covers

Kerrang! started its fame covering thrash and glam metal (which was later discarded in favour of bands such as Nirvana as musical genres evolved; the magazine is often criticized by readers for repeating the same process of replacing musical trends each time a new one becomes popular). Later introduced were the trends of emo, metal core and genres alike. This became a large interest to Kerrang!’s eye, which was not welcomed by everyone who read the magazine. However, the magazine only grew more and more, with an Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) record of 80,186 copies sold, entering its most commercially successful period.

Target audience

As the UK’s most popular youth media brand, Kerrang! is read mostly by people of ages between 15 and 24 (judging by results from 2012).

As shown by the graph above, it appears that Kerrang! is not far off a 50/50 split concerning the gender of readers, however, males dominating. It can be argued that, in this case, the magazine appeals more to males, but the percentage is so close that this would be an unfair judgement.

Multi-platform

Website

· So far, the official Kerrang! website (www.kerrang.com) has welcomed over 172,600 unique visitors, and over 505,900 page impressions.
· The website was launced in 2001 by Dan Silver.
· The website is mostly centred around information on the magazine, featuring latest information on upcoming events and current bands.
· The website hosts an online shop, podcasts, TV and radio, message boards, an online forum featuring a ‘rants and raves’ section. Because of the diversity, merchandise was given a wider opportunity to be sold.

Radio

· Kerrang! debuted its digital radio station life in 2000 in the UK.
· The primary focus and point of the radio station was playing rock and alternative music back-to-back.
· In 2004, it became a regional radio station, featuring a number of specialist programmes of rock and subgenres of such.
· It once again became a digital radio station in 2013, now with its own radio app.

· The Kerrang! TV channel is a joint venture between Bauer Media Group and channel 4, covering many mainstream rock musical genres.
· It also features classic rock bands (such as AC/DC and Aerosmith), along with more classic heavy metal bands (such as Guns N’ Roses and Metallica).

Tour

· Kerrang!’s tour features a wide assortment of rock music concerts in the UK, with bands such as Good Charlotte, Bullet for My Valentine, Coheed and Cambria, Sum 41 and many more.
· The tour is usually announced in October of the previous year and is held throughout January and February of the year of touring.
· Relentless Energy Drink has sponsored the tour of several years.

Tuesday, 6 October 2015

Preliminary Task: 'Average' College Magazine (FRONT COVER)

Preliminary Task: 'Average' College Magazine (CONTENTS PAGE)

Preliminary Task: Anaylsis of Student Magazine + My Own Front Cover and Contents Page

90% of people reported that they do not read the magazine. From this, we can determine that the current product does not work.

The top five results, in order were:

1. Black

2. Red

3. White

4. Blue

5. Green

From this, we can assume that black, red and white would be the best colours to use to attract customers/make the magazine visually pleasing.

30% of people said that they would like the magazine to be published every month.

30% of people said that they would like the magazine to be published every term.

20% of people said that they would like the magazine to be published every fortnight.

From this, we can decide which - monthly or termly - would be the best option.

40% of people told us that they would not be prepared to pay.

20% of people told us that they would be prepared to pay 50p.

12% of people told us that they would be prepared to pay 25p.

12% of people told us that they would be prepared to pay £1.

From this, we will have to decide if it would be a good idea to make people pay, or if we can get away with charging 50p, based on the results.

The top 5 results were:

1. Music

2. Food

3. Revision advice

4. Competitions

5. Fashion

From this, we can deduce that these things should be on the front cover of our magazine, with Music and Food taking priority (coverline).